Blogs Comment On Anti-Rape Amendment, 'Personhood' Efforts, Other Topics

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice;  Sexual Health / STDs;  Abortion
Article Date: 21 Oct 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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The following summarizes selected women's health-related blog entries.

• Blogs Comment on Sen. Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment: An amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill -- introduced by freshman Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by a 68-30 vote -- "would prevent the Pentagon from doing business with contractors who force employees into binding arbitration over rape and sexual assault charges," Emily Douglas writes in The Nation's "The Notion." According to Douglas, the bill was introduced in response to sexual assault and rape allegations by female employees of defense contractor Halliburton/KBR who said they were pressured not to report assaults by their co-workers while stationed in Iraq. According to Douglas, "[D]efense contractors often required employees, as a condition of employment, to submit to binding private arbitration in disputes with the contractors (including allegations of sexual assault), instead of bringing complaints to public courts," and "the Department of Defense claimed they couldn't prosecute for this very reason (even though these clauses only prevented civil suits)." She continues, "Predictably, Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opposed Franken's bill," Douglas writes. Sessions said Congress "should not be involved in writing or rewriting private contracts" and called the amendment a "political amendment at bottom, representing a political attack on Halliburton." Douglas writes that the bill is "a reminder that rape survivors go public with their stories at a serious emotional cost, and the onus is on political leaders and advocates to make it worth what could be only in the most euphemistic sense be referred to as their while" (Douglas, "The Notion," The Nation, 10/16). In a related blog post, Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon's "Broadsheet" examined a segment from the Oct. 14 episode of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" on Franken's bill. The segment was less than five minutes long but included the word "rape" 10 times, "cutting through all the euphemisms and obfuscation to the clear-cut issue at hand," Williams writes. The amendment "passed because 68 U.S. senators understood that it was not about the incidents or disputes, it was about violent crime," she continues. The blog entry also includes a video of the "Daily Show" segment (Williams, "Broadsheet," Salon, 10/16).

• "Guttmacher Responds to Critics of Global Abortion Study," Susan Cohen, RH Reality Check: A Guttmacher Institute study -- "Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress" -- on global contraception and abortion trends has attracted criticism from some antiabortion-rights advocates, Cohen, Guttmacher's director of government affairs, writes. One "overarching" finding of the study is that "the legal status of abortion is not highly correlated with the extent to which abortions actually occur in a given country or region," Cohen writes, adding that the study found that "abortion rates are about equal in countries where the procedure is broadly legal and countries where it is highly restricted." Critics who argue that federal Hyde amendment restrictions on abortion funding in the U.S. have been shown to deter women from having abortions are "fundamentally misreading" the research, Cohen says. Rather, the Guttmacher study found that one in four Medicaid-eligible women who would have an abortion if covered, instead continue the pregnancy to term. According to Cohen, that does not mean the Hyde amendment has reduced abortions significantly or that restoration of public funding have a substantial impact in reverse, but instead proves the larger point that many women will go to great lengths to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Critics of the report also "often cite selective time periods to make their points about the impact of abortion legalization," focusing on the immediate years after Roe v. Wade and not mentioning long-term trends, she continues. Reducing abortion rates "takes time," and "the time required for policy changes to have an impact can vary widely from country to country," Cohen writes. She adds that the "bottom line" is that where contraceptive services are widely available and used, abortion rates will fall over time. She adds, "Behind nearly every abortion is an unintended pregnancy, and it is clear that the best way for a sexually active person to avoid unintended pregnancy is to use contraception consistently and correctly." While no form of contraception is "perfect," Cohen says that "one thing is certain: Nonuse of contraception ... is hardly an answer." She concludes, "It would only lead to dramatic increases in both unintended pregnancy and abortion in the United States and around the world" (Cohen, RH Reality Check, 10/20).

• "National 'Personhood' Backers Barnstorm Montana With One Big Exception," Wendy Norris, RH Reality Check: After failing to win a vote on a "personhood" ballot measure in Colorado last year, antiabortion-rights advocates have set their sights on Montana, Norris writes. The groups have proposed a Montana ballot measure that would declare that life starts "at the beginning of biological development," she reports. These efforts are "the latest gimmick by antiabortion activists to overturn Roe v. Wade by focusing on zygotes' due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment," Norris explains. The Montana effort, led by the American Life League, "is also as noteworthy for the obvious absence of" Personhood USA, "a prominent Denver-based group in the egg-as-person campaign," founded after the defeat of Colorado's first-in-the-nation personhood ballot measure, according to Norris. She adds that abortion-rights groups are already working on opposition strategies, which will appeal to Montanans' "uniquely Western pseudo-libertarian 'stay out of my business' perspective on all things political." Alyson Hagen, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana, said, "These groups are not interested in the real-world implications that eliminating our privacy rights and restricting access to abortion care and birth control will have on the health and safety of the women in our lives" (Norris, RH Reality Check, 10/19).

• "HPV Vaccine: Women Now Have a Choice Between Cervarix and Gardasil," Deborah Kotz, U.S. News & World Report's "On Women": Human papillomavirus infections "may drop precipitously, with both boys and girls getting vaccinated," as a result of FDA's recent decision to approve GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix HPV vaccine for girls and women ages 10 through 25 and expand approval of Merck's Gardasil vaccine to include use in boys and men ages nine to 26, according to Kotz. She notes that experts believe "that in order to make a dent in the vast number of women who become infected with HPV -- about 80% at some point in their lives -- men need to be vaccinated as well." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend the vaccine for boys, but it is less clear "whether parents will get their sons vaccinated," even though HPV is linked with several male cancers, Kotz writes. She continues that the approval of Cervarix gives women "a choice between two vaccines against HPV, each of which has different advantages." Kotz explains that Gardasil is better known among providers and women in the U.S., and it protects against the strains of HPV that cause 90% of genital warts, which Cervarix does not. However, GSK says Cervarix is about 89% effective in preventing precancerous lesions caused by HPV type 31. Kotz speculates that GSK could market Cervarix as offering added cancer protection (Kotz, "On Women," U.S. News & World Report, 10/19).

• "What Women Want: Equal Benefits for Equal Premiums," Candace Webb, National Women's Law Center's 'Womenstake': Webb writes that NWLC Co-President Marcia Greenberger's testimony at a recent Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee hearing on gender discrimination in the health insurance market "came as we're preparing to launch our new campaign, 'Being a Woman Is Not a Pre-Existing Condition.'" Webb reports that Greenberger's "testimony and the campaign focus on the discrimination women forces in the individual market, where women are unfairly charged higher premiums than men, even though the plans usually do not include maternity care, and in the group insurance market, where workplaces with predominantly female workforces pay significantly higher premiums." Webb continues, "Women of low and middle incomes are unable to afford to insure themselves and are forced to make medical decisions, including the decision about whether to have children, based on what kind of coverage they can obtain, as testified so eloquently by two mothers who attended the hearing" -- Amanda Buchanan of Idaho and Peggy Robertson of Colorado. Webb adds that Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who presided over the hearing, "succinctly stated what we as women know: 'Health care reform is a must-do women's issue'" (Webb, "Womenstake," National Women's Law Center, 10/16).

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